“We’re not a freakin’ wire service! We’re not about being the first to get the news out,” said one participant. “If we go ahead with this, it makes us no different from the AP or Reuters.”
Debate became heated as independent journalists and activists at the Independent Media Center (IMC) in Cancún, Mexico, argued about how to cover the protest-suicide of a Korean farmer at the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) last September. The Korean Farmers’ Federation requested that an IMC video account of the suicide remain unreleased. After a lengthy discussion, the editorial collective reached consensus and decided not to load the video onto the IMC Web site.
The decision about whether to broadcast the video footage illustrates, at least in part, the way many alternative media outlets differ from the mainstream press: From start to finish the productive media process strives to maintain openness, inclusion, consensus, transparency, sensitivity and integrity. Alternative media projects and outlets such as the Cancún IMC are taking root with surprising facility and at astonishing rates across the globe. These media outlets not only cover topics neglected by the mainstream, they are also challenging and creating alternatives to existing media models and practices. Central to this challenge is the principle of media as a commons, not a commodity.
The global Indymedia collective www.indymedia.org, started in Seattle to provide coverage of the 1999 WTO meetings and protests, is at the forefront of this new media paradigm. Indymedia describes itself as “a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate and passionate tellings of the truth.” Since 1999, Indymedia has expanded into a global network of over 100 Indymedia collectives with several affiliates like the Cancún IMC and many others still in the process of officially becoming part of Indymedia. One of the most recent additions is Al-Muajaha www.almuajaha.com in Baghdad.
Following in the tradition of the original Indymedia collective, the Cancún IMC was created for that city’s September 10-14, 2003, WTO Ministerial. The Hurakan Alternative Media and Tech Convergence, held the week before, formed the IMC by pooling the resources and skills of activists and independent journalists arriving in Cancún.
Hurakan, a Mayan deity, simultaneously brought destruction and rebirth to ancient Mesoamerica. He wrought havoc with his favored weapons—wind, storm and flood—to rid the Earth of the first humans, so as to spawn a human kind better suited to appease the Gods. Media activists and organizers clearly had the Mayan cosmic dialectic between destruction and creation in mind when they named the Convergence “Hurakan.” The Convergence symbolized “destruction” through the rejection of media models based on hierarchies, elitism, exclusion and profit. “Creation” consisted of making an autonomous, democratic, participatory and cooperative space for progressive voices regardless of the bottom-line.
Individuals from Indymedia Chiapas put forth the idea for the Convergence following the Our Media Forum in Barranquilla, Colombia, in May 2003. The Convergence’s goal was to equip interested participants—namely civil society groups, journalists and activists—with the tools and skills to create effective media strategies. This was not only accomplished through workshops, but also through the experiential learning involved in creating a sophisticated, working media space from the roots up, replete with computers, print material and broadcasting equipment.
“Don’t hate the media,” the Convergence’s motto advised, “become the media.” Organizers knew that if interested people from the popular movements attained the skills to create effective communication strategies, then autonomous media groups and projects would result.
The Convergence was designed to consist of three phases. The first phase provided for an exchange of ideas and skills through workshops and information sessions. Workshops ranged from the construction of radio transmitters and antennae for pirate broadcasting to the history of Indymedia and video editing. The second phase consisted of a preparatory period where participants would use their newly acquired skills to get the IMC ready for the blitz of coverage during the WTO meetings and protests the following week. Forums and assemblies held during the final phase would explore threats, challenges and proposals for independent media.
However, the reality of the Convergence unfolded quite differently. The frenzy of events—workshops, assemblies and forums—did not fit neatly into phases, much less an organized schedule. The anarchic structure of the Convergence engendered both frustration and opportunity. But organizers expected this anarchy; indeed, it was hoped for. “The idea was to create a space with enough infrastructure like wiring, computers and equipment,” explained one organizer. “But we wanted to minimize the organizational structure so that an autonomous media project could be realized in the most organic way; one driven by the vision and needs of the participants themselves.” The supposed phases melded into a weeklong ad hoc exchange of skills and knowledge while the IMC became fully operational. Formal workshops did take place, but for many, the most fruitful experiences were the exchanges between individuals teaching each other their respective media fortes—layout and design, editing, HTML, tech support or radio broadcasting.
Independent journalists and activists working at the Cancún IMC. (Teo Ballvé)
The Convergence provided important instruction for campesino and indigenous participants from the surrounding Mexican states of Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca. A group of campesinos, proudly wearing their IMC-issued media badges, learned important layout and design skills with the purpose of going back to their community to start a biweekly newspaper or newsletter. A few participants were from Cancún, a city starved of alternative media and with little history of activism or organizing.
Ultimately, the diversity of participants made the Convergence and the IMC a success. By the end of the WTO meetings, the number of registered participants reached over 300. They were mostly North Americans—Mexican and U.S. residents—but also included many Europeans and other Latin Americans. More importantly, their diversity of skills and expertise gave the IMC its edge. This edge became apparent in the holistic nature of the coverage and the various mediums employed once the meetings and protests began.
The IMC was an around-the-clock operation. Bleary-eyed activists worked until the early morning hours to get out the news of the day’s events. Just to move around the building one had to negotiate the sleeping bodies of exhausted participants. With daybreak came a much calmer scene, since most people were at the protests or inside the WTO press center. A rotating group of participants was permanently stationed at the IMC to receive field dispatches from individual protestors or the designated bands of roving dispatchers armed with cell phones and bicycles. The late afternoon and evening were peak work hours at the IMC: writing articles, uploading photos, broadcasting radio pieces and solving a slew of tech problems. The decentralized group of IMC “reporters” probably out-numbered any other media organization covering the meetings; certainly no single organization matched the comprehensive and multilingual coverage of the IMC.
Organizationally, the IMC subdivided into different collectives that worked specifically, although not exclusively, on a part of the IMC project (radio collective, video collective, tech specialists, etc.), but the IMC also housed independent media projects with their own modes of distribution. The IMC managed the bulk of what it produced through its Web site www.cancun.mediosindependientes.org. The Web site’s content included original feature articles, an open newswire, up to the minute dispatches from the field, photos, video files, audio files (interviews, speeches, etc.), a 24-hour radio stream, links to other press and comments. Other IMC ventures included the daily newspaper Boca del Hurakan and a pirate radio station. As part of a counter-information campaign, the IMC also produced flyers and fact sheets to distribute among the local population, who in the months prior to the meetings had been bombarded with propaganda and misinformation that demonized activists as violent “globalifóbicos” and exalted the “virtues” of the WTO.
IMC depiction of a Mayan god crushing the Spanish acronym for the WTO.
The backbone of the IMC—and Indymedia more generally—is the open publishing model achieved through the Web site. A technological and conceptual innovation largely pioneered by Indymedia, open publishing allows for anyone to post articles, photos and just about any other media to the newswire and media gallery. Skeptics argue that this openness diminishes the quality and accuracy of the reporting, and for this reason it could never be a widely practiced model. However, readers accustomed to this model understand the disadvantages of open publishing; they realize that any media—open or not—should be read with a critical eye. More importantly, the system allows for a decentralized network of contributors to voice diverse perspectives and information. A degree of editorial control over the wire and the general content of the Web site does exist. Under this model, the editorial collective works as a steward of the Web site to ensure that editorial content is newsworthy, credible and consistent with the mission of the IMC. The same model applies to photos, video files and audio files.
The IMC in Cancún is only one example of how diverse groups of people with a multitude of skills can create spaces across the globe for excluded voices amid the globalized consolidation of corporate media. But they are not just resisting the corporatization of media; they are creating an alternative—something critics of the so-called “anti-globalization” movement rarely recognize.
Indymedia, like many other alternative media organizations and projects, is a child of the global movement for social justice and alternative globalization. Not coincidentally, it incorporates structures and processes that make it, as Naomi Klein has noted, “uniquely equipped to mirror the international and diverse nature of this protest movement. This is media that crosses borders and issues like no communication network we have ever seen before.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Teo Ballvé is NACLA’s associate editor and a contributing news editor for the Resource Center of the America’s Connection to the Americas www.americas.org.
